We’ve added several new clients in the past few months, but I’ve forgotten to mention them. These include

• National Maritime Museum (Greenwich, England)
• UCLA
• US Merchant Marine Academy
• San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park
• Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA)

Also, we have a number of institutions currently running trials, including:

• Family History Library (Salt Lake City)
• Library of Congress
• US Naval Academy
• Library of Virginia
• La Crosse (WI) Public Library
• Siuslaw (OR) Public Library

If you’re associated with any of these institutions, you should be able to access the complete contents of the site, without any problems at all. If you’re not associated with any of these institutions, you can always ask your local librarians to investigate a subscription to ShipIndex.org, and ask them to set up a free trial.

I’m pleased to report that two institutions have signed up for institutional subscriptions in the past week. Everyone at the ShipIndex.org world headquarters is excited about this. The two institutions are pretty far away from each other: East Carolina University, which offers an excellent Masters program in Maritime Studies (admittedly, as a graduate of that program, I might be a bit biased), and the Australian National Maritime Museum, in Sydney. So, while they may be some 9700 miles apart from each other, they share excellent company. (BTW, try using Google Maps to get driving directions from one to the other. In a nutshell, drive across the country to Gas Works Park in Seattle, kayak 2756 miles to Hawaii, drive down to Honolulu, then get back in the kayak and paddle 3879 miles to Japan. Why even stop in Hawaii? Really, Google? You then still need to paddle another 3300 miles down to the top of Australia, and then drive down to Sydney. I think it would be easier to just drive the 100+ miles to the Outer Banks, and start paddling from there, through the Panama Canal, and straight down to Sydney. But who am I to questions Google Topeka?)

Any individual associated with ECU (that is, any student, faculty, or staffmember) can access the complete ShipIndex.org database within Joyner Library, anywhere on campus, or from home. Anyone working from within the ANMM library, in Sydney, can similarly access the entire ShipIndex.org premium database.

Several other institutions are currently trialing ShipIndex.org. If you’re affiliated with an institution that you think might benefit from access to the database, please have them give us a call. We’re still offering significant plankowner discounts that can save them a lot of money.